There are many types of plagiarism but those commonly committed by students are as listed below:

1

Word-for-word plagiarism

This involves lifting sentences or phrases from other writers' materials and inserting it into your research paper without acknowledging the sources. It is the most common form of plagiarism and also the most easily identifiable because either the style and quality of writing does not match your own or your supervisors have done some checking. Remember that if you can find the article so can your supervisors. If you use another writer's material, you must place quotation marks around the quoted material and include a footnote or in-text citations. For quoted text, use ellipsis dots (...) for any omission within the sentence or between sentences. Use square brackets to indicate word(s) or punctuation marks that you have added in the quoted text.

Example :

The source

It is reasonable that the government does not allow 100 per cent foreign ownership in industries like paper and plastic packaging, metal stamping, fabrication, electroplating and printing. After all, we need to have some share of the business in our own country. But it is important that the government should allow majority foreign ownership of at least 51 per cent in the wide range of non-strategic industries so as to raise their technology and international competitiveness.

The Malaysian government policy of not allowing 100 percent foreign ownership in certain industries is understandable as we need to control these industries. But it is important that the government should allow majority foreign ownership of at least 51 per cent in the wide range of non-strategic industries so as to raise their technology and international competitiveness.

2

Using another writer's ideas without acknowledging the source

If you are using another writer's creative idea or suggested solution to a problem, you must acknowledge your sources by using footnotes or endnotes. However, it is not necessary to acknowledge public domain information which is accepted as general information that everybody knows e.g. historical facts and dates, geographic areas, folklore, established principles within a certain field. You may use the information freely even if you had looked it up in a reference book.

3

Acknowledging the source but reproducing the passage without quotation marks

This is to mislead your supervisor into thinking that you have paraphrase the information rather than copying word-for-word.

4

Paraphrasing the source too closely and not giving due credit

This is a case of following a source article sentence-by-sentence or paragraph-by-paragraph. The sentences may not be the same as in the original source but you are copying the author's reasoning style.

Example :

The source

At this juncture, we need to ponder whether Confucian culture and Islamic culture could indeed form a union, on the one hand to meet the challenges of Western domination and on the other to foster a greater mutual understanding and to bring about deeper interaction and broader mutual enrichment.

At this point, we need to stop and think as to whether there is a possibility of combining the cultures of Confucianism and Islam so that we know how to handle the controlling powers of the Western countries and also to spread better goodwill and understanding for the benefit of both cultures.

You should paraphrase when you want to summarize or simplify the cited author's ideas or information. Do not paraphrase simply to avoid quotation.

5

Borrowing all or part of another student's work

It is natural for friends to help each other and to borrow notes. However, you must write your own paper and not submit your friend's paper as your own.

6

Paying someone to write the paper for you or buying papers online

You will be tempted to pay someone to write the paper for you or visit the known Websites to purchase a paper especially if you work to last-minute deadline. No matter how desperate you are, you should not resort to this action as such papers are usually of low quality and often do not address the questions posed. Moreover, this is direct plagiarism and the consequences of being caught may be severe.